


stretched upon the rack

by owedbetter



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: I fully blame Ben shaving his fucking head and this is how I cope., Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 02:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owedbetter/pseuds/owedbetter
Summary: He's back.





	stretched upon the rack

**Author's Note:**

> Ben shaved his fucking head and I can't get over it. So, have a quick little thing. Also, the title was lifted from lyrics from the American Psycho musical... which is very Billy Russo, if you think about it.

_“I’m ready to restart_  
_To excavate some bleeding hearts_  
 _I'm ready for release_  
 _A little violence to bring me peace._ ”

\- Patrick Bateman, ‘ _American Psycho_ ’ the Musical

* * *

_What do you do when everything you are has fallen apart?_

This is what Billy Russo thought to himself as he settled into one of his secret safe houses.

He set the bag down. It landed unceremoniously and without grace on the filthy, dusty floor and the dust rose from all around him and straight into his lungs. He coughed. The movement hurt the stitches on his face and he groaned as he did so. When the dust settled and the dim light above him flickered brighter and brighter until it was as bright as it could be, he set himself down on the threadbare couch and let his shoulders relax for the first time in weeks.

Where was he, you might ask.

This was one of his more off-the-books hiding places in the city. It was so hidden, in fact, that he’d very nearly forgotten about it.

To his credit, Billy Russo was not a fucking idiot. Of course he wasn’t. He was a methodical man—one who never put all of his eggs in the same basket because who the _fuck_ does that?

And he had always been remarkably clever. He had hidden hiding spots all over the city and in different states (and a few tucked away in different countries) just in case. Sometimes, he would loan these safe houses to his crew who needed to lay low for a while after a job was done.

Today, he needed one of these spots to himself.

The first thing he thought of once he relaxed was that his face itched. His wounds were healing. He didn’t even want to know what was under the bandages when every single twitch of an expression on his face made him hiss. The painkillers had long since worn off from his system. If he didn’t know any better, he thought Madani may have commanded the hospital staff to give him the lowest possible about of it. He wouldn’t put it past her – nor would he blame her. Didn’t stop him from cursing her out in his head, though.

He wanted to smirk as he remembered the look on her face when she put the puzzle pieces of him together, when she finally worked it out for herself. Clever girl, it was only ever going to be a matter of time with her.

But as he walked towards the bathroom to unwrap the bandages, he could only wince and resent her for it.

He clicked the bathroom’s single, hanging light bulb to life. It was some horror movie-level shit kind of situation in the bathroom. Grime, rat shit, dust, and other forms of filth filled it all for it was unkempt and undiscovered.

When he tried to twist the faucet, it practically coughed – made the same noise as a wheezing, geriatric old man. No water. Of course. He took a breath and exhaled a sigh. Billy took his stolen long-sleeves over his wrist and wiped the dusty mirror clean. Well… as clean as it could be, anyway. Clean enough to see his own reflection and all he could see was white and red.

His eyes looked back at him, peeking through the small holes of the bandages, and shadows formed over the dirtied cloth. With effort, he slowly unraveled the old bandages that covered his face. Over the parts where the blood had dried and stuck the bandages to his flesh, he grit his teeth and pulled harder. And slowly, as he stripped off the old gauze, came the reveal he’d been looking for.

It was the first-time Billy had seen a mirror since that day and he remembered the last thing he’d ever seen on it. His own face, covered in blood, with pleading eyes – looking up at his former brother, begging for mercy he knew somewhere that he didn’t deserve.

Now, looking at his face, he saw.

The hospital had tried to put some parts of him back together. He remembered how it felt when that bullet when through his skin, how his mouth will always taste like blood and gunpowder now. How it felt when his cheek had scraped against that shattered glass—he knew what it felt like now to be skinned alive. Parts of him had been taken that night and these were no simple scars.

He raised a hand against the grooves of the scars and stitches on his face. He’d lost weight in that hospital—his cheeks were not always this sallow, the bags under his eyes not this swollen and dark. His hand went further up and where it usually met with soft tresses, he felt the rough stubble of new hair growing back in. They’d shaved his head. Large patches of his face would never grow parts of his beard again either.

He looked in the mirror and he could not see the man he knew himself to be. All nice suits, slicked back hair, impeccable skin. The only thing he recognised in the reflection was his own dark eyes that stared back at him, full of hate from an endless night.

He licked his dry, cracked lips and watched his new face react as everything sunk in. His old tricks would never work again, he knew, as he came to realise that he had lost everything.

His company, his name, his face.

And to think that Rawlins had threatened to destroy him if he did not comply with the plans to eradicate the Castles—as it turns out, he could do that just fine all by himself.

Billy Russo was dead—or as good as. No allies, no family, no allegiances. His own man, just like he always wanted, though not quite in the way he’d imagined. Though he’d escaped the hospital and his own arrest, he knew that there was no running. He was not a man who ran away when things got rough—even like this.

He was no sissy chicken shit like Samson. Strip him of everything, fine. Cut away at everything he was and leave him to die and he’ll fucking live just to spite you. He’d been defeated, he could admit to that at the very least, but there was strength left in him. There are other ways to fight.

That was the kind of man he was.

This is the man Frank Castle made of him.

He punched the mirror with all his might and looking at his broken face upon the shattered glass, he saw himself clearly for the first time. _This_ is what he was now.

Frank wanted him to remember? He wanted him to live with it?

He snarled, a cruel smile dancing on his lips.

Oh, Billy would remember all right.

And now he would live to make sure Frank never fucking forgets.

“Oh, Frankie boy,” he muttered. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

He spat at the sink—blood mingling with grey dust against the dirty, off-white porcelain of the sink. He licked his lips and saw blood dripping from his split lip, from the gashes on the side of his face, from the stitched up wound where Frank Castle had shot him in the face.

_What do you do when everything you are has fallen apart?_

_Simple,_ he thought to himself.

You put yourself back together, that’s what – like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

And that’s exactly what Billy Russo became.


End file.
